Down the Rabbit Hole:
150 Years of Alice
by MARSHAL TENNER WINTER
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat, "We're all mad here. ..."
Books written in the 1800s have been so influential to today's popular culture that one can’t really discuss it without knowing when to stop. We have horrors such as Dracula and Frankenstein, progressive melodramas such as "Jane Eyre" and "Pride and Prejudice," and philosophical epics like "Crime and Punishment" and "Moby Dick." Literature got a boost in excitement once the world of science and industry began to influence fiction writers, leading to such classics as "The Time Machine" and "War of the Worlds." It is during this time in the mid- to late-1800s, the height of Victorian stuffiness, that a mathematician made up a child's fantasy novel on a whim during the last part of a long boating excursion to entertain three bored sisters, one of them named Alice. This novel would come to influence our own society's entertainment and culture more than any other book written in that 100-year span.
The story, of course, eventually came to be known as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and its characters and events have become archetypes of an almost-Jungian status. The author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, adopted the alias Lewis Carroll. Besides being a mathematician, he was also a clergyman, a teacher, a photographer, and, most importantly, a writer. Not everything he wrote was as nonsensical as Alice is, but as a mathematician, he came equipped with the logic and reason needed to balance the absurdity in such a work. Indeed, the genre of nonsense requires a balance between reason and absurdity.
Perhaps it says something about our popular culture that a novel in this genre is one of the most influential through time.
Close your eyes and think of 10 things on your own that are inspired by "Alice." Perhaps you think of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" song, or the first Matrix movie, or any cartoon that includes a Wonderland-themed episode, or perhaps you think of the television show "Once Upon A Time In Wonderland." If you really need proof of the influence of "Alice," check out Wikipedia.
Interactive fiction is not an exception. We'll only take a look at one such Alice-inspired work here, but there are many more. Search for "Alice" in IFDB.
One game that both offered an interactive journey into "Alice" as well as competent graphics to add a splash of pizazz was Magnetic Scrolls’ "Wonderland." Even without the graphics, this game stands out for a few reasons.
It really opens the world of Wonderland to the player to an extent that one doesn't feel on-rails as much as when playing other IF.
Sure, there are parts, as in any IF, that bottleneck the player to get the plot going, but otherwise, one can wander the world of "Wonderland" pretty much left alone until reaching key points, such as Alice reaching areas in the forest that open up new chapters.
This game was also made in 1990, during IF's commercial death-rattle. But this allowed the game to offer features unseen in other works. It offered multiple windows to separate the graphics from your inventory and your inventory from the story screen. These windows, much like the windows we are all used to by now, could be resized and moved about the screen. The interpreter I played didn't feature all this and that's just as well. I simply wanted the story and the graphics to play, of course.
Wandering around in peace is always welcome, but there is a lot of old-school adventure backtracking. Traversing back and forth between locations where you need to be can be a royal pain. For example, I found myself at the Mad Tea Party with the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse, and the puzzle there involves me eating a piece of mushroom obtained from the Caterpillar, a fellow I've not met yet. This kind of thing leads to hours of game play, like it or not.
The new content in the game, that is, content that is not in the actual book, is actually very effective and very in-tune with the flavor of "Alice In Wonderland." This is unlike some text adventures, like Melbourne House's "Lord of the Rings: Game One" which included an Orc rock band and the ability to find and smoke cannabis. In "Wonderland," you can find (and then take) a fork in the road (adding this fork to your inventory). You can find yourself in a music room where the chairs dance around a self-playing piano. Even simple locations do very well paying homage to Lewis Carroll and his merry creations, such as finding a treacle well in your travels.
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," I tried out all the Wonderland-themed IF that I could find. Magnetic Scrolls' is a gem for an old-school IF. I definitely suggest giving it a try. We've included a handy link to a place where you can play it (but you may have to play with your Flash settings to get the interpreter to run, if you don't already have an interpreter for it, that is).